Thursday, September 24, 2009

Buying Milk (an excerpt)

It's been awhile since I've last posted. What's new in my life; a demanding school curriculum (filled with amazing teachers and classmates) a lot of overtime hours at work, the soothing bliss of Autumn. I am so broke right now; tuition, books and usual bills are really putting a hurting on me but I should be back on track by mid October :-P
Anyways, I'm posting up an excerpt from a story I sent to Carte Blanche, hopefully they'll publish it :-) Let me know what you think...

Buying Milk (excerpt)

Eva.I was named after my grandmother.
Eva Garcia didn't know how to read, she never finished elementary school. She had her first child at 17; he died a blue little thing, the umbilical cord around his neck. Then came the twins, my uncle Cesar, my aunt Lorena and finally, my Mother.
One night, Eva put on her rollers, gave her prayers to Babalu Aye, went to bed and never woke up. She died in her sleep, she was 46 years old.
"My father killed her. She was healthy like a horse, she died of a broken heart" according to my mother and my aunts.
The Garcia women were cursed to be alone. You could call it a superstition, an old woman’s tale, whatever, but when you looked at our family tree, you noticed that all Garcia women had been single mothers.
It wasn’t that nobody married them; it seemed that men took a pleasure in putting a ring around their fingers, lending seed to some babies, and then disappearing.
Eva’s case, as well as her own mother’s, was a little bit different; their men disappeared sporadically. They visited other women’s beds but were always back, albeit, several months later.
It was death that ended their tumultuous relationship.
In medical terms, Eva suffered a heart attack but to the family, Eva died of a broken heart. She had spent 30 years with a man that couldn’t treat her right, nor plain leave her, and she, as Dominicana as one can get, would never leave him.
My grandfather was still alive; I had spend two summers with him in Santo Domingo when I was younger, he used to give me money and sent me off to buy him beer, he'd let me keep the change and I'd return with a box of Presidentes, for him, and mentas, for me.
“A man like that can ruin you, take away so much from you that you don't even have the strength to wake up in the morning.” my Mother and aunts, again.
To me, he was an old man with baby blue suspenders and white arm fuzz longer than the hair on his head. I didn’t know him enough to love him but I pretended I did because, after all, he was family. He had a nice face, you could tell he was handsome in his youth but no matter how hard I searched, I couldn’t find the murderer in the lines of his fore head or the brown of his eyes.



9 comments:

Unknown said...

Wonderful writing! I'm excited that so many things are going on in your life and the busyness sounds like it's all good.

The wedding is supposed to be October 23rd but we're debating on Vegas or staying in California. Hope to figure it all out soon.

~EssenseVibez~ said...

hey beautiful--thank you for stopping byto visit me--i hate it when you're gone for so long---but i understand-YOU HAVE A LIFE!!--love you gurl!!!

Squarepeg Jam said...

Love it! Very engaging piece of work... hope you will share the entire thing with us when it gets published!

latree said...

a great story. I hope it will be published. can't wait to hear from you..

O.F.C.J. said...

Sounds like you're enjoying your life. Great! Glad you're still writing in :)

Best wishes on the publishing also.

O.F.C.J.

Deeptesh said...

Touching n nostalgic!Nice 1!hv u 4gtn me?I've 2 new poems...

www.deepteshpoetry.blogspot.com

magdaayuk said...

Nice!:) Can you send me the complete version by email? Ill give you feedback!

Strawberry Girl said...

Love it Nana, have you heard back yet?

I've been off of blogging for a while as well, different reason... but I'm planning on getting back into school next year, it will be great!

Hope all is well with you. :)

Strawberry Girl said...

(Oh, and I changed the address from which I am publishing my blog. You can link it through my profile) :)